I have so many happy memories of Christmas with our little family of four growing up. (And luckily much of those memories are well-documented by one Garry Johnson on VHS.) I get all warm and fuzzy thinking about the memories we're making with the kiddos during our own holidays at home. It's just the best feeling on the planet. These are the days to remember! :)
Making reindeer food, as tradition dictates. This year they wanted to make glittery goats and stir them with carrots for Rudolph.
Bea wanted to make sure that Santa had both milk and kefir to go with his cookies, because well, of course she did!
After reading a couple holiday stories together on the couch tree-side, the little sweeties drifted off to visions of sugar plums.
On Christmas morning we awoke to this...
Then I put the camera down and except for a couple of blurry images and a couple videos that may or may not ever make their way to the blog, we just enjoyed our Christmas morning together. I will share that a really big standout of this year's Christmas was that the girls completely got the GIVING part more than ever. They were seriously more eager to give each other the gifts they'd picked out for each other and give us the gifts they'd chose for us than they were anything else. Lou and I looked at each other and he literally said "Whoa, do you realize what's happening here?!" It was a pretty incredible realization.
Now all that's to say that yes, they were of course very excited about getting presents too. Top gifts for Bea were her My Little Pony castle from us, Marble Track from Josie and "American Girl(esque) doll," games and projects from Santa.
Bea was also still quite under the weather on Christmas morning, so took her new sleeping bag as the perfect signal to nap under the tree. Little sweetie!
...Then set up a fort for herself later in our bed so she could rest uninterrupted.
While Bea napped, Josie and Lou headed outside to practice with her favorite gift of the year - an archery set from us. She also really loved her 500 piece puzzle from Bea and pile of new books and projects from Santa. (She also got really really excited that she got new sweat pants. The girl is obsessed with sweat pants.)
Here are some more scenes from celebrating Christmas at our house - including a fun afternoon with their "big girl cousins" playing Forbidden Island.
After this we headed to Xenia for the annual holiday extravaganza at my parents' house. But, that gets its own post. Upon returning back to Cincinnati a few days later, there was more holiday break action to be had. Because the weather cooperated and because we were in desperate need of fresh air after all of us battling that dang flu of 2014, we hit our favorite playground while Lou headed to work and we had the whole place to ourselves!
We also started a series of home upgrades. More on that another day. We'll call this the before picture.
And of course, loads of time spent playing with new toys and games!
The girls have hit a second wind on playing with dolls. They have some pretty elaborate role-playing that goes on with them. I just absolutely burst with love for them every time I walk into their room and see scenes like this - all three beds ha!
Josie is really, really proud of her K'nex roller coaster that she assembled almost entirely on her own. I think this girl may have a future in engineering.
